Kate Lloyd
"It attacks it prey, copies it perfectly and then hides inside it." - Kate explains the Thing's assimilation. Kate Lloyd was a paleontologist that was working at Thule Station and the the main protagonist of The Thing (2011). During the events that transpired at Thule Station, Kate was one of the first to realize the true nature of the thing and work towards defeating it, though her efforts were temporally in vain as one specimen would escape Thule Station, reaching U.S. Outpost 31, leaving only R.J. MacReady to finish from where Kate started. Biography A graduate of Columbia University and a Ph.D. candidate in paleontology, Kate Lloyd was well-known for her work on handling frozen carcasses such as those of a saber-toothed cat. It was for this reason that Adam Goodman, a friend of Kate's, recommended her to Dr. Sander Halversen for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join his research team in Antarctica, where an extraordinary discovery had been made. Despite Halversen's refusal to detail the nature of the discovery and the requirement that she would have to leave her work behind and journey to Thule Station immediately, Kate was persuaded to take up the offer, joining Adam and several other Americans on a helicopter to Antarctica. Not long after their arrival, Halversen led the team to the site through a cavernous opening in a glacier, where Halversen revealed the nature of their discovery: an alien spaceship, which likely crashed close to 100,000 years ago. Blown away by the discovery, Kate was then told of an even more remarkable discovery, and the one for which she had been recruited: a passenger, or perhaps pilot, of the spacecraft was able to exit the vessel and make its way through the snow for a limited distance before being frozen into the ice. The creature was the first verifiable example of extraterrestrial life on Earth, a prospect which excited the Norwegians at Thule Station and was the reason for their secrecy. Now equally enticed, Kate directed the excavation of the creature, using a crane to pull out the creature in a single large ice block, which was then brought back to Thule Station. Once the creature was retrieved, Kate's importance to Sander dwindled as the senior researcher became more and more possessive of the discovery. When Sander ordered that a tissue sample be taken for study from the frozen extraterrestrial, Kate objected on the grounds of lacking either a proper quarantine and the possible damage that might be done to the specimen. Sander, however, overruled Kate's objections and later reprimanded her privately for questioning his judgment, making it clear that he did not need her to "think." Kate's misgivings about Halversen's approach would prove well-placed, if for unanticipated reasons, and as a result of the tissue sampling the ice began to thaw at an accelerated rate, causing the thing inside of the ice, unknown to Kate or the others, to slowly stir inside. Late that evening, as the team celebrated its discovery, the thing broke out of the ice block, an event witnessed by the American helicopter pilot Derek Jameson. Eventually, the thing was tracked down by Olav and burnt, though not before it attacked and killed Henrik as well as Jed, the team's lone dog. The burnt corpse of the thing, Henrik inside of it, was brought to Kate and Halversen for an autopsy, to many of the team's dismay. To Kate's horror and Halversen's fascination they found that Henrik was being absorbed by the thing, his tissue merging with it as he was digested, to the point that the two were becoming indistinguishable. Kate was also surprised to find that an internal fixation used to set one of Henrik's bones is outside what they believe to be Henrik's half-digested body, but is in fact a half-formed replica. After the autopsy, while Sam Carter prepared to take the injured Olav back to civilization, Kate took a sample of Henrik's tissue for further analysis. As Kate watched through a microscope, she discovered that the thing's cells were not dead, that they were in fact, still alive and predating on Henrik's remaining tissue, consuming it and then imitating it. Based on this discovery and the autopsy, Kate hypothesized that the thing might be a shapeshifter, able to imitate its prey after consuming it. Kate shared her discovery and observations with her friend Adam who, still shaken by the events of the previous night, was unable to confirm or deny her conclusions. Shortly thereafter, when Kate left to wash her face, she found blood-covered fillings on the floor of the bathroom near a closed shower curtain. Pulling back the curtain, Kate found the shower's floor and walls covered in blood and gore. Realizing that a thing was still loose and that one or more of her colleagues had been assimilated, Kate rushed out of the compound to warn the helicopter lifting off with Sam, Derek, Olav, and Griggs not to take off, lest they possibly bring a thing with them. Although Sam was unable to hear Kate, her urgent hand signals convinced him to bring the helicopter down. Realising it has been discovered and its escape is foiled, the thing disguised as Griggs reveals itself, kills Olav and causes the helicopter to crash. After the chaos of the helicopter crash, which was located beyond the team's capability on foot to rescue, Kate returned to the bathroom to find proof of her claims, only to find the shower washed clean, the last of the blood disappearing through the drain. With little else besides her own recollections and the tooth fillings, Kate called the rest of the group to the rec room to explain herself, revealing her hypothesis that the thing was a shapeshifter that "hid inside its prey" as well as her belief that one of them was already a thing. Increasingly impatient with Kate's apparent hysteria, Halversen accused Kate of paranoia or deliberate sabotage and Adam, when questioned about her observations of the thing's cellular activity, was uncertain. As a result, few of the scientists were willing to listen to Kate and Matias left with Thule Station's last remaining helicopter to try and rescue the survivors of the crash. After everyone else had left the rec room, Juliette approached Kate and told her that she believed her and that she'd seen Colin leaving the shower room with a rag or towel, possibly after disposing of Kate's evidence. Juliette then told Kate that she knew where the keys to the vehicles were kept and that she would help Kate in preventing anyone from leaving Thule Station. Kate followed Juliette into the storeroom where she began looking for the keys. Unable to find them, Kate asked for Juliette's assistance and when Juliette failed to respond, turned toward her and realized that Juliette had transformed into a thing. Crushing the thing beneath a large shelf, Kate ran from the storeroom, shouting warnings to the rest of the base, alerting Karl and Lars to the situation. Although Karl was killed and nearly assimilated, Lars arrived in time to burn the thing and its prey alike. Now convinced of Kate's sanity the rest of the group decides to burn the bodies of the Juliette-thing and Karl. Shortly after this Jameson and Carter appeared unexpectedly from out of the snow, nearly frozen to death. Although several members of the group were convinced that the two Americans are things and should be burned immediately for the group's welfare, Kate convinced the group to lock the two up instead and asked Adam and Halversen if they can prepare a test to determine if a person is a thing or not, to which Halversen replied that mixing a pure blood sample with the thing's blood should be sufficient, since if the blood is truly a human's then a thing's blood should react to it. Not long after Halversen and Adam began working on their test, however, the lab burst into flames, leaving no chance for the test's implementation. Tempers flared immediately and both Adam and Halversen were accused of being a thing before Kate proposed a simpler, if less certain test. Basing her test on her earlier observations that the thing could not absorb and imitate inorganic materials she determined that a person could be determined not to be a thing if they had fillings in their mouth, since a thing would be unable to imitate silver. Kate demonstrated the technique on herself first, showing her fillings and then vetted the remaining members of the group, narrowing down the number of suspected things to opur: Adam, Halversen, the station commander Edvard Wolner, and Colin. Halversen pointed out that Kate's test was based on a hunch, rather than truly scientific, and Adam stated that he was going to be killed because he "flossed" but Kate insisted that her test was better than none. As tensions ran high between those who had passed the test and those who hadn't, Kate, through Peder's translation, instructed Lars and Jonas to retreive Jameson and Carter so they too could be subjected to the test. Shortly thereafter, Jonas returned without Lars, informing Kate and the others that Jameson and Carter had escaped and that Lars was gone. Although Jonas pled with Peder and Kate to help him rescue Lars, Kate was insistent that they continue to guard Adam, Halversen, Edvard, and Colin. The argument spiked as Edvard tried to convince Peder and Jonas that the Americans, including Kate, were the true enemy, when Carter and Jameson broke into the base through a wall, armed with Lars' flamethrower. Kate and the others rushed to head the duo off while Edvard pressured Peder to flame them as revenge for Lars. When Peder attempts to do so, however, Jameson shot him and blew the flamethrower tank, throwing Edvard against the wall. As Jonas carried Edvard back to the rec room, however, Edvard revealed himself to be a thing, killing Jonas and Derek quickly before consuming and merging with Adam to become a new thing. Chaos erupted as the remaining survivors, Kate included, scattered, each trying to survive on their own. Kate and Carter stuck together for a time, fighting off the merged Edvard-Adam thing and its various offspring before Carter was briefly separated from Kate and trapped in the kitchen. Fortunately for Carter, Kate arrived in time to torch the merged thing, driving it through the base's wall and into the snow where it went into hibernation until its eventual retrieval a few days later by R.J. MacReady and Copper. Kate and Carter were at first relieved, hesitantly wondering if the ordeal was over, before they saw the newly assimilated Halversen driving off into the snow in one of the base's Snowcats. Kate and Carter took after the thing in their own Snowcat, taking with them a flamethrower and several grenades, following it to the original excavation site, where they find the thing reactivating the crashed spacecraft in an attempt to lift off and leave Antarctica, presumably to spread to the rest of the planet. The two of them try to stop the Halversen-thing but are interrupted as the ship's engines activate, knocking Kate off her feet and sending her tumbling into the ship. Some time not long after, Kate awakened to find herself within the alien ship's exotic interior, surrounded by advanced technology and foreboding architecture. Kate explored the ship for a few more minutes, finding what appeared to be the control center, before she was confronted with the Halversen-thing, which attempted to assimilate her. Fleeing into a small conduit, Kate hid from the thing, which seemed unable to reach her. After a moment, Kate hesitantly reached for her grenade that she'd dropped only to be ambushed by the thing, which latched on to her and pulled her out but not before she managed to grab ahold of the grenade. Terrified, Kate still manages to get a good aim with the grenade, throwing it into the thing's maw and killing it, though not before Carter's timely arrival with a flamethrower to help her escape. Carter and Kate fled the ship as it was disabled from the chain reaction of the Halversen-thing's detonation, preventing it from lifting off. Once alone, Carter informed Kate that there was a Russian base not 50 miles from where they are and that, with the fuel in their Snowcat, they should be able to reach it. While tempted, Kate noticed that Carter was missing his left earring and determined that he was a thing. Deceptively indicating that she was going to put the flamethrower in the Snowcat's back, Kate got out of the vehicle and then revealed to Carter how she knew he hadn't been a thing earlier and how she knew he was one now. The Carter-thing, confused, reached for its right ear, further confirming Kate's suspicions and, over the Carter-thing's protests proceeded to burn the Snowcat and the thing within it, preventing its escape. Now stranded and truly alone, Kate climbed into Halverson's Snowcat and stared blankly into the night. Eventual fate Kate's end, like Childs' and MacReady's is left mostly ambiguous, though it is likely that she died from exposure unless there was enough fuel in Halversen's Snowcat to make it to the Russian base where she would have been taken back to civilization. Behind the scenes Kate Lloyd is most likely based off of Margaret Sheridan's character Nikki Nicholson from the original 1951 film, due to their similar roles as the protagonists and scientists. However, whereas Nikki was a supporting character and love interest for the main character Captain Patrick Hendry, Kate Lloyd is the central character of the 2011 film, both as a viewpoint character and a central protagonist, fulfilling a similar role to MacReady in the 1982 film, which is retroactively a sequel to the 2011 film. According to interviews with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played Kate, the character is also largely inspired by Ellen Ripley, the central protagonist of the Alien film franchise, which, like the Thing franchise, belongs to the sci-fi horror genre. A comparison between the two characters was also drawn by several reviewers. In the original script for the prequel written by Ronald D. Moore, Kate Lloyd was described as in her "mid-twenties, pretty, and bright-eyed." As in the final version of the film, Kate was the central protagonist and a paleontologist as well as the last survivor (not counting Lars and Matias) of Thule Station, killing Carter after discovering he'd been assimilated. Gallery 312606_286714988006548_191901360821245_1190293_1432347698_n.jpg|Kate|link=Kate Lloyd 296972_286227981388582_191901360821245_1188762_1768644394_n.jpg|Kate and Sam vs the Thing 301128 289011494443564 191901360821245 1199698 246826956 n.jpg|Kates close encounter 308769_287594027918644_191901360821245_1195205_1509115009_n.jpg|Kate explains "Things" thing03.jpg thing08.jpg Triva *Even though a woman, Kate has a strong stomach and is barely disgusted when performing autopsies and such. Unlike Juliette, who is the complete opposite. *Kate and Carter show some sort of affection towards each other throughtout the film. For example: #'Carter is the first person who friendly converses Kate on the helicopter ride to the Antartica base.' #'During the celebration of the discovery of the Thing, Carter sits opposite Kate. When she dislikes the taste of the shot she takes, he asks Griggs to get another type of beer for her.' #'Carter and Kate are seen chatting and smiling by the pool table seconds before Derek runs in to warn everyone that the Thing has broken loose.' #'There is a deleted scene where Carter comforts Kate, after she has been underestimated by Sander. He is nervous about the Thing being toted on his chopper. She smiles and assures him that what she found was real and is safe for travel if needed.' #'Before leaving for the chopper to fly Olav to the nearest medical center, Carter implies to Kate that he's leaving and he assures her that he'll be back. As soon as he walks off from her to exit the base, she glances at him in a worried and affectionate way.' #'After realizing that someone on the chopper is the Thing, Kate runs outside and begins shouting Carter's name and signals down the chopper. After seeing Kate, Carter proceeds to land, but is then distracted by the Griggs-Thing and crashes miles away.' #'Kate is a bit traumatized after Carter's assumed loss and is desperate to prevent it from happening to anyone else after that experience.' #'When Carter and Derek arrive back at the base, Lars is prepared to torch them as Kate panics and quickly stops him.' #'After Lars locks Carter and Derek up, Kate implies that she needs a blood test before she can let them go. Carter stares at her and is disappointed when she won't believe it is truly him. Carter races up and is threatened by Lars as Kate quickly stops Lars from torching him. She then slowly proceeds out of the room saying to Carter, "This is all I can offer you right now..."' #'After Carter and Derek escape their lockdown, Derek shoots and kills Peder and as Carter keeps the others, including Kate, gathered under his control, Kate tells him, "They're not all human...". He glances at her with an aware look.' #'After battling the undefeated Split Face, Derek has died from its impalement. Carter tells Kate to burn him as he walks out of the room. She glances at him in a sorrwful look and burns Derek in Carter's wishes.' #'After meeting back up in the hallway, Kate asks Carter if he's alright as he returns the same question to her.' #'After being chased by the Split Face, Carter is cornered by it in the kitchen. As it charges towards him. Kate immeadiatly appears and torches in, sending it crashing through the wall, into the open. As Kate uncontrollably continues to burn it in rage, Carter touches her arm and implies that it's enough.' #'After seeing Sander drive off in the SnowCat, Kate explains to Carter that if Sander isn't stopped, the virus could be spread to another region. Kate and Carter chase after him in another SnowCat. While Carter is driving, Kate just glares at him. He glances back at her; confused as to why she is blankly staring at him. She asks him about Lars and he assures her that he is alive.' #'As the pair proceed through the underground cave, they make their way across the layer of the ship. In doing so, the vents of the ship open up. They both proceed to sprint to the other side but the last vent trips Kate, leaving her hanging onto it. She pleads for Carter's help. As he rushes towards her. She slips and falls into it. He shouts her name in fear but then proceeds to search for her by using a safer method of going down into the ship.' #'As Kate awakes from her short concussion, she explores the ship. She's then attacked by the Sander-Thing but then destroys it with a grenade as Carter suddenly appears and they both escape.' #'After leaving the cave, Carter sits and takes a rest. Kate glares at him for awhile and asks him what should they do. He claims that there is a Russian base not too far from where they are. As he stands up, she glances at him carefully and he touches her arm, telling her that they will ''both ''make it out. They then proceeds to the SnowCat. Carter prepares the gears of the mobile as Kate examines him once again and says that she needs to put the flamethrower in the back. As she climbs out, she stands there and asks Carter if he knows the reason she knew it was really him when he returned to base. He asks her why as she tells him it was his earring. Confused, he tuggs on his right ear. She slightly shakes her head and says in sadness "''It was your other ear.'' '''It is now revealed that Carter was assimilated by a Thing in the cave when they were separated. The Carter-Thing pleads and begs her to not kill him. While it continues to protest, her eyes are visibly swelled with tears. She hesitates to kill him/it, since it is in the form of Carter, someone she had newly gained affection and care for. Kate eventually burns it and climbs into Sanders' Snowcat, and stares blankly into the night; traumatized and possibly guilty for what she did. #'Kate and Carter are the only two at the base, who have interacted the most.' *Kate is shown to be calm, cool and collected when it comes to panic situations. *Kate resembles Scarlett Ross from the film '''28 Weeks Later. '''They are both raven-haired. They both stand their grounds as with being involved with science or autopsies. They both are trapped in an infected quarantine. They both are headstrong women and they both play alongside a male character who has interest in them. Ironically, their male interests are both burnt alive by a flame thrower, after suspected of being infected. Category:Characters Category:2011 characters Category:Living characters